According to NAACP, The United States is roughly 4% of the World's population, but hosts 25% of the World's prison population.

That means 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2% of America's population is under some form of correctional control.

Even more interesting to note is that the prison population in America has quadrupled from the year 1980 to 2013. (500,000 to 2.3 million people)

Does this mean that our society has actually become four times as dangerous since 1980 because we now have four times as many prisoners? Or does this simply mean that our criminal justice system has become more strict and broken?

A look at the penalties for victimless crimes would lead you to believe the latter. It was not too long ago that a homeless man in Louisiana was actually dealt life in prison for selling just $20 of marijuana. Could you imagine that ?

So what do we need to actually change about our criminal justice system ?

Changing the way we view the "War on Drugs" would be a start. Our society now punishes people with addictions as opposed to setting up a system that could actually treat these people medically and help these individuals with their addictions as opposed to throwing them in jail.

Poverty? Mental illness? Substance abuse? The United States has no solution but to slap you with a life-long label, blame you, shame you, and turn any solutions that can help you into a moral and political issue rather than listening to science.

Glenn Greenwald, the author of a CATO study of the drug addictions in Portugal noted, "By freeing its citizens from the fear of prosecution and imprisonment for drug usage, Portugal has dramatically improved its ability to encourage drug addicts to avail themselves of treatment.

The resources that were previously devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts are now available to provide treatment programs to addicts."

America could learn a lot from Portugal's legislation with this more humane approach to people struggling with drug addictions. ​​

As a country, we deserve better than to shoot our own citizens in the foot who are already struggling and are down. Not to mention that with similar legislation to Portugal, we would have a lot less people addicted to harmful drugs.